


Scrambled Walter with a Side of Brownies

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Fringe
Genre: Community: 1_million_words, Lots of obscure references too, Multi, My first crack!fic attempt, Please be gentle, Walter takes a trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a weekend challenge on the 1_million_words community on LiveJournal. Prompt requested maybe including the following: Aliens ~ Alliteration ~ Aquaman ~ Bacon ~ Binary Code ~ Bunnies ~ Cake Pans ~ Caps Lock ~ Dandie Dinmont Terrier ~ Elephants ~ Euphemisms ~ Extra Cheese. So of course, I thought "Fringe".....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scrambled Walter with a Side of Brownies

"Ahhh…" Walter slid the oversize, double-padded headphones off of his ears with a deep sigh. "…Bach!"

The notes of the B Minor Mass were still fading away in his brain, glowing purple and blue and a deep red with mauve undertones. He'd have lain there and watched them forever if it weren't for the infernal sound of someone chewing Exceptionally Crunchy Food. Damn them.

"What on earth are you eating?" Walter asked.

September was standing right next to where Walter was kicked back in his leather lounger. He was too close. Hovering, one might say. He tipped the bowl in his hand forward silently.

"That's Quisp!" Walter sounded both intrigued and mildly annoyed. "Quisp cereal hasn't been on the shelves for thirty years!"

"A brief trip to August of 1974 was required." September said between bites. "How could I not bring some back? Because… sugar bombs."

"The Nixon resignation?" Walter asked him, and grumbled a little acknowledgment when September nodded. "Had to be why you were there. Not a terribly eventful month otherwise, as I recall."

"What does it mean?" September gestured to a far corner of the lab and Walter saw September had commandeered a couch and a discarded TV set with tinfoil around the rabbit ears. "In the late night teleplay I'm watching one of the characters says, "'That's a lot of alliteration from anxious anchors put in powerful posts.' I think it's meant to be ironic."

"He's calling another of the characters a pompous ass for thinking that alliteration confers gravitas," Walter explained. "Now tell me why you’re watching a 25-year-old movie and eating cereal in my lab?"

"Because the only other thing on at this hour is an old Aquaman cartoon."

"No, no man! Why are you _here_?!" Walter roared and September would have flinched if he had it in him. He settled for cocking his head.

"Because 2603 earth is next on my list and 2603 earth is under… renovation." He handed Walter the box of cereal and found him a bowl. "It's a nightmare. Half of Paris is stacked in the mud room south of London and the Canadians will have to share a room for a few months….”

"Well I certainly hope you all get it under control soon." Walter got up in search of milk.

"Yes, you do." September nodded. "You really do."

They both turned when the door to Walter's office opened to the sound of raucous laughter inside. Walter's favorite petite vision in camouflage was walking their way with a mixing bowl on one arm.

"Walter. Do you have a tin? Not the kind for keeping cookies fresh, the kind for baking brownies. Or cakes. Preferably a tin with the dimensions of six by nine inches wide and two inches deep."

"Alt Astrid, do they know you're here? On our side?" Walter abandoned the cereal to dig around on the counter for her. 

"Sure. We're all here. Agents Lee and Lee and Dunham and Dunham and other me and Peter. We're having a slumber party in your office." She took the tiny cake pans Walter handed her. "Easy Bake. With pans of this size we will need to make several small brownies instead of one large brownie. But it will suffice. Thank you, Walter."

He was half way to his office by the time she started pouring batter, and he heard September asking her if they might dump a cup of black pepper and maybe some bacon in one of the batches.

"You children really need to work on your dietary habits." 

Walter flung open the door and gasped. His office floor was covered with sleeping bags. The desk lamp had a black light in it. His Astro was kicked back on a bunch of pillows on the floor with cucumbers on her eyes while the Olivias painted her finger and toenails.

"Peter, make them stop this nonsense!" He looked over to where Peter was filling in a dirty Mad-Libs book with the extremely iffy nouns, adjectives and verbs the girls were randomly shouting out. 

"Are you serious?" Peter stopped writing long enough to gesture at them and shrug at Walter. "I'm trying to talk them into naked massages."

"Dream on," Olivia said.

"Don't be absurd,” Walter barked. “I don't want that image in my head! You're all like my children. Except for you, my redheaded strumpet.” 

He gave Fauxlivia a little leer and she bit her lip and shot him back a grin and a wink.

"I have many dreams about you in your P.J.s,” Walter said. “And believe me we aren't just fixing scrambled eggs."

"Right back at'cha, Walter."

A loud thump and a moan from inside the storage closet made Walter jump.

"What in the world's going on in there?" He clearly only half wanted to know.

"Agents Lee and Lee are playing Seven Minutes in Heaven," Alt Astrid had walked back in, and was pulling up a web site on her phone. 

"Yeah. Someone better tell them it's been twenty," Astrid said from under her cucumbers, and the Olivias snickered.

"Brace for bunnies!" Alt Astrid shouted and Walter would have asked her what the hell she was talking about except that three tan and two white bunnies popped out of thin air and that, understandably, distracted him for a moment.

"Fangirls and boys," Alt Astrid explained. "Slashers in Australia, Sweden and Brazil just read the line about the Agents Lee making out and they all popped plot bunnies. Oh… wait for it: There’s a 0.010010 chance of another bunny eruption." 

A huge white rabbit appeared the second the words were out of her mouth. No pocket watch, though. 

"Why so big?" Walter asked.

"She writes with caps locked," Astrid said. 

"I'll never get it…." Walter said, shaking his head and thinking of the simpler time when he’d been listening to Bach.

"Really? Agent Lee doing Captain Lee?" Alt Astrid asked. "Because I'd ship that."

"Hell, yeah!" Fauxlivia and Olivia said at the exact same time. 

"You owe me a Coke." Fauxlivia said.

The sound of a dog barking shut them all up for a second.

“What’s a terrier doing in the lab?” Walter asked.

“It’s not a terrier,” Peter nodded toward the doorway. “It’s an elephant.”

And indeed, when Walter turned, there was Nina Sharp with an agitated baby elephant on a leash. 

“Walter, can I borrow your sensory deprivation tank? I need to unload an elephant.”

“Is that a euphemism my dear?” 

“No, Walter, it’s not a euphemism it’s a Massive Dynamic experiment gone very, very wrong,” Nina was already leading it back toward the tank followed by a skeptical looking Walter. “You heard it barking. You don’t want to know what else it can do. Not to mention that it’s jacked up on cortexiphan so I can ship its hairy backside out of here. I’d use the bridge, but your ‘kids’ locked it up tighter than a drum so Alt Phillip can't break up their little slumber party.”

“Oh hell,” Walter had his doubts about a number of things, starting with whether the elephant would fit, but right before his eyes there it went. Nina slammed the doors of the tank shut and counted to ten, then peeked inside. “I most certainly hope you didn’t just start World War Three.”

“You and me too, Walter.” Nina said. 

“Come on,” Fauxlivia yelled from the office. “New game, Walter and Nina, and you’re playing!”

“Are we up for this?” Walter asked and Nina chuckled.

“Sure. It might be fun. What can they possibly come up with that we haven’t both done a few dozen times?”

“Good point my dear,” he tossed an arm around her. “Good point. I do miss the seventies sometimes…”

“Me too,” Nina said. “But you know what they say, Walter: ‘There’s no time like the present.’”

~~~~~

Astrid had thought about going straight home from the movies. She was glad she hadn’t when she walked into the lab and smelled burning brownies and heard Walter counting down boisterously from ten inside his office. 

“Woah, woah, Walter, stop!!” She got to him just in time to prevent him falling flat on his back and cracking his head open. “What the .... ?!”

“We’re doing trust falls!” Walter shouted.

“Walter, the only ‘we’ in the room is you and me,” Astrid turned him around in a slow circle and felt like the worst killjoy ever at the way his smile faded.

“Where did they go?” Walter said. “We were… having a slumber party.”

“Um huh…” Astrid walked him out to the lab. “Walter, exactly what have you done tonight? Since I left at six?”

“Oh, well, I dropped some LSD and then I listened to some Bach….”

“Aha,” Astrid said. “Mystery solved. How about we order a pizza and I’ll sit with you until your Magical Mystery Tour winds down?”

“Can it have extra cheese?”

“Sure,” Astrid said, hooking an arm under his shoulder and leading him to the sofa. “I’ll get that going. I could eat.”

“You deserve a raise my dear.” Walter slumped contentedly onto the cushions. “You should discuss it with Phillip. 

“Oh, I will,” Astrid said, but she couldn’t resist ruffling his hair as she did. “First thing in the morning.”


End file.
